The third event slated on my comeback trail was a relatively relaxed event. My first two tournaments were nine rounders. This one was the King's Island Open (Nov 11-13), a five-round tournament in Ohio. GM Gregory Kaidanov invited me to stay at his
house for a few days before the event. He figured it would be convenient, as
I could stay there and then we could travel to King's Island together. I
imagined that there would be a few GM's at King's Island, but I was really shocked when it
turned out there was eight (In fact, the grand total later turned out to be ten--Ed.), making it an incredibly strong
tournament.

Once again I had a pretty decent result on
paper. This is the third tournament in a row
that I've done relatively well in, but I know for sure that I'm not very good
right now. Obviously I understand that I'm a better than average
chessplayer, but the mistakes I make and the huge gaps in understanding that I
have seem gigantic to me. I feel like it's only a matter of time before I
have a really horrible tournament. A few obvious flaws marred my play in King's Island but one of them was surprising since it's not a normal problem for me: I was having big time management issues. Let's look at some examples of poor clock handling:Shahade,Greg
(2459) - Bath,John (2107) King's Island Open
(1), 11.11.2011

It's
completely ridiculous of course, and you figure out how silly it is when
you put the position in Houdini and every move gets pretty much the
same evaluation. It's good to recognize positions where it doesn't
really matter that much which move you make. Maybe I thought I could get away with
it because I thought even a small edge against
someone much lower than me would be enough, even with a time deficit.
However this is just rationalization. I could have made these moves
in about 5-10 minutes. I went on to win the game....but put myself at risk by
getting into such deep time pressure.

Four minutes. Now
you may think four minutes isn't that big a deal, but at the start of the time
control you get three mintues per move. Meanwhile Rc8 is such a completely
obvious move, and I have no clue what other move I was considering at the time
(I don't think I was considering anything). Generally you can
improve on your three minutes per move ratio by making your opening
moves quickly, and usually you get it up to four minutes per move. However if
you spend 3-4 minutes on every move after the opening, even on the relatively
obvious ones, then when you spend 15-20 minutes on a few moves (which is tough
to avoid from time to time), you are going to find yourself in time trouble
again.18.Nab5 Qb4 13 minutes for this
one 19.Qc1 Be6 Nine minutes for this,
even though this was my plan before the move....again not sure why I spent so
long. 20.a3 Qb3

I spent 19 minutes
on this, although admittedly it is quite brave to intrude with my queen on
b3...as it's very close to being trapped. However I was pretty sure I was going
to play this move after about 5 minutes, so probably could have sped up the
process. Just kept getting concerned about random tricks of his like Nxd6,
Rxd6, Rd2 idea Bd1 and Re1 idea Bd1. Qa5 was a safe choice and I thought that
it also gave me a comfortable game while playing, but I thought this one was
stronger. 21.Rd2 Na5 I spent ten more
minutes here. To be fair, the last few moves have been relatively sharp but
let's take stock. From move 13-22, I went from 1:50 to :22. So in 1/4th of the
first time control, I spent 3/4ths of my time. Not a good idea Greg! Obviously
some complicated stuff could happen in the next few moves, which I will be much
less likely to figure out successfully if I'm very low on time. In fact I
achieved a good position and almost blew it due to a time-related oversight...
22.Re1 Nxc4 23.Bxc5
Nxd2 24.Bd4 Bh6 25.Bd3 Nxf3 26.Qxh6
Nxe1 27.Bxg6 Rf1+ 28.Bg1 hxg6 29.Qxg6+

I
calculated this a few moves before and thought it was just over, although I had
just 9 minutes left at that point, so the calculation was a bit rushed. I also
felt that 25...Bf5 was safe and pretty winning for me, but I felt this one was
a complete knockout blow. I almost had a heart attack when I saw that after
...Kf8 he can go Nd4. I totally missed it! I was very lucky to have ...Rf6 (and
to have found it with only 5 minutes or so left), and my lack of time could
have easily caused me to miss a few tricks like this.

This is the thing...I won
the game, but that doesn't mean that my time expenditure was acceptable. It's
tempting that when you win you can just say "oh well, it worked out this
time". But even when you do stupid things, you are going to win sometimes,
just like in poker. However in the long run you are going to win less.29...Kf8 30.Nd4 Rf6 31.Qh5 Qc4 32.Ne4 Qd5 0-1

Shahade,Greg (2459) -
Perelshteyn,Eugene (2516)

Position after
36.Rfd1

I've been outplayed
this entire game, had absolutely no idea what was going on at any time (this
was upheld in the post mortem) and I had one minute left after
making this move. The sad thing is that I'm actually not even worse anymore.
Somehow no matter how bad you are outplayed, it's hard for your
opponent not to make a few inaccuracies, and his king is now pretty weak and
there is a deadly trap that he has to avoid. If he plays the natural 36....Ra1
37. Rd7 is nearly winning! He almost fell for it, but in the end found
36...Bf8. Because I had just one minute left due to my irresponsibility, I
immediately played a huge and obvious blunder 37.Qf6, while 37. Qd7! would have left
the result of the game completely in doubt. For instance 37....Bc5 38. Bxc5
Qxc5 39. Kf1 Qxe5 was his plan he mentioned after the game, but I simply go 40.
Re1 and it's unlikely I will lose. If 37...Ra1 I can simply play 38. Rxb2
because my rook on d1 is defended now.

I felt like it was ok to get into time
trouble, because the whole game I had an unpleasant position, and was
desperately trying to make it more pleasant, but ...you never know
when things are going to turn around. You never know when that big opportunity
is going to show up and if you give yourself no time to
properly take advantage of it, it doesn't really matter if it does come up.
Well it does sometimes because even then you may find the right move, but your
likelihood of doing so goes way down, as evidenced by my ridiculous 37.Qf6,
which loses in many different ways. 37...R2a6 38.Qg5 Ra1 39.Kf2
Rxb1 40.Rxb1 Qc2+

0-1So anyway, I'm sure I will still get in
time trouble from time to time, but hopefully it won't be with the frequency as
it was in this tournament, and hopefully I won't find myself constantly
spending 20-30 minutes on a natural move for no apparent reason. My problems with time pressure may have been due to some slight
intimidation. It's been a long time since I've been used to playing
tournament chess, and they keep pairing me with strong players.

It's
important to recognize it when you have this problem, and I suspect that the
entire issue (and my relatively harsh views on players who routinely get into
ridiculous time trouble their entire life) will be the focus of a future piece.

In closing, the tournament champion
GM Gregory Kaidanov had a few things that he wanted me to add. Gregory scored
5-0, to go undefeated in a field of ten grandmasters. First of all, since I
stayed at his home the week before the event, he would like to attribute his
incredible 5-0 score to my moral support and coaching. Secondly he pointed out
that he never remembers having a tournament like this in his entire life.
Obviously he's had great tournaments before, but he never remembers going
undefeated in a tournament while beating three Grandmasters in the process.

Finally, Kaidanov got philosophical on the ride home and started discussing the
similarities between poker and chess. He pointed out that chess is very similar
to poker, because in both games you have to overcome the rake. What is the rake
in chess you might ask? According to Gregory it's the "drawish nature of the
game", and therefore, just like in poker, in order to win you need your
opponents to make mistakes.